Effective presentation of computer-stored data is essential for many reasons. Among the reasons that effective data presentation is important is that the discovery of data trends and correlations between data variables can be promoted by effective visual presentation of the data being analyzed. Also, an advocate of a particular position might wish to present data in an effective, easy to comprehend format when the data supports the position.
As an example, sales data is routinely stored in databases, and the data can represent particular trends and data variable correlations that might be important for the selling entity to know, e.g., sales by product over time, sales by region over time, sales by salespeople over time, etc. As another example, computer databases might contain information about publicly traded stocks, with the information possibly indicating particular trends and/or correlations between particular stock variables that would be important for investors to know.
From the above discussion, it readily can be appreciated that each tuple or set of tuples in, e.g., stock-related data typically represents a database element. Thus, a single tuple might represent data on a particular stock on a particular day, with a set of tuples representing data on a particular stock over many days. Each tuple might include values for many variables. In the stock context, these variables can include price, earnings, certain ratios, trading volume, and so on, with a large number of potential trend-revealing combinations and correlations being possible among the variables.
Simply presenting the variable values of data tuples in tabular form, however, is often a less than effective way to analyze and/or present data. This is because people do not quickly discern trends and correlations in data when the data is presented in spreadsheet format. Consequently, trends might be present in the data, and/or important correlations might exist between variables of the data, but the trends and/or correlations might escape discovery when the data is presented in tabular form.
The present invention recognizes that when data is to be presented to users and to business audiences both for analyzing the data and for advocating a particular business position, graphical presentation of data can better convey particular business trends and forecasts than can simple tabular displays.
Data tuples may be supplied to computer users in many formats, including, among others, real-time data feeds, databases (relational or otherwise), flat files, and spreadsheets. The present invention further recognizes that data spreadsheet applications for non-expert computer users have greatly proliferated, and that graphics applications that are intended to enable such users to better exploit their databases preferably should be relatively simple, indeed, intuitive, to use, so that such users might be able to quickly and easily discern correlations and trends as well as generate interesting graphics for business presentations.
Unfortunately, existing personal computer (PC)-based data graphics applications merely provide static, two-dimensional graphics charts. To the extent that three spatial dimensions are presented by existing PC-based graphics applications, the third dimension typically has no data significance. Consequently, such applications do not enable the non-expert user to easily depict the potential correlations between three or more variables. Further, owing to the generally static nature of displays that are generated by existing PC-based graphics applications, time-dependent behavior of data is not displayed as effectively as it might be.
As still further recognized herein, hardware, in the form of computer chips to support 3D graphics, has been developed for the computer game industry, and such hardware is increasingly being incorporated into PCs for game purposes. The present invention propitiously recognizes that such 3D hardware can be used by non-game applications, e.g., by a business-oriented application or process-oriented application or science-oriented application, to provide a system for generating dynamic 3D graphics that can present three or more database variables at once that can move or vary over time, to enable non-game users to thereby easily discern data trends and/or correlations as well as to generate effective data presentations.
In addition, the present invention recognizes that some users of such a system, particularly relatively novice computer users, might desire a graphics generating program that automatically undertakes at least some tasks involved with correlating database elements to graphics or visual attributes of a 3D graphical display. With this in mind, the present invention recognizes the desirability of providing a rule-based system that automatically identifies particular data attributes/characteristics and based on these, generates a model 3D display for the user using the system rules.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a PC-based 3D graphics system which graphically presents three or more database variables at once. Another object of the present invention is to provide a PC-based 3D graphics application which has an open architecture such that user developers of the application can alter the application to fit their needs. Still another object of the present invention is to provide a PC-based 3D graphics application in which correlations between three or more database variables can be graphically presented. Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a PC-based 3D graphics application that is easy to use and cost effective. Another object of the present invention is to provide a PC-based 3D graphics application that presents a dynamic graphics display which uses time-dependent variance to enliven the display and to present the values of a database variable using the dimension of time. Still another object of the present invention is to provide a PC-based 3D graphics application in which correlations of database variables to graphics attributes can be automatically made for a user.